The present disclosure is related to the image forming system, portable terminal, and image formation method that shows print image of image received from the image forming apparatus (henceforth a “preview”) on the portable terminal.
An image forming apparatus is a printer, a multifunction printer, multifunctional peripheral equipment, or an MFP (Multifunction Peripheral). The image forming apparatus generates image data of a preview from image data of read manuscript (henceforth “preview image data.”) The image forming apparatus can transmit the generated preview image data to a portable terminal, such as a mobile phone, a smart phone, or a tablet terminal by wireless communications. Also, the portable terminal receives the preview image data from the image forming apparatus, and shows a preview image on the operation panel of the portable terminal. Thereby, the user can confirm the preview image at hand. For example, in a typical printing system, a printer, and a printing method, a print preview request is transmitted from an external apparatus as like a portable terminal by remote access to the printer. In this case, an external apparatus is a personal computer, an information terminal, a facsimile, or the like, which are connected with the image forming apparatus as like a printer via the network. Then, a printer generates a print preview image according to the display capabilities of the external apparatus and can show the appropriate print preview image on the external apparatus. Also, after the printer supplies the print preview image to the external apparatus, a definite period of time may pass in the state having no printing execution instruction from the external apparatus. In this case, the image data and the printing preview data related to the print preview request are deleted.